Road Trip October 2016 – The Bolt Bunch Discovers Geocaching

We recently took a very short road trip when the kids were on fall break. There just was not a lot of time to take a few day trip like we always try to do on there fall break. Elles was in Guatemala for one week of the break building concrete walls and Jakey was playing football, so our time was more limited this year.

We decided to hop in the car with the Xacti and head out to a state park for some hiking. The problem is, Elles, who is currently a senior in high school is taking some community college classes to try to get a head start on her college career (another article to come soon about saving money on college). She had to schedule a make up test because she missed a week of class while she was in Guatemala. That took the morning, so we had time to decide what state park we wanted to visit.

We like to go see the rock formations at Turkey Run, but it is about a 3.5 hour round trip for us. We started a not so in depth analysis on Google Maps and decided to take the short trip to Mounds State Park. How did we come up with that after our not so in depth analysis? We saw that on their activities page that they had some geocaching adventures in the park. We decided we should give that a try. I texted the Meathead and asked if he wanted to join us since that is fairly close to his location at Ball State University. The Meathead was up for the fun and met us at the park.

Sam documented the drive with the Xacti, but I accidentally left it in the car when we started walking through the park. I was so worried about getting the geocaching apps ready that I completely forgot it. It turned out being OK, it allowed me to focus more on the fun. I ended up having my GH-1 in the backpack, so I was able to get a couple of video shots on some of our discoveries.

I guess I should talk a bit about geocaching to explain what I know about it, which is not a whole lot yet. Geocaching is basically a treasure hunt with a GPS. Someone hides a “Cache” and marks the GPS coordinates. Usually in this cache, there is a small log book that you can sign and date. Some of them will have larger containers that will have small trinkets that you can trade out. This is what makes it fun and entertaining for kids.

Almost all of us have GPS units right in our pockets. You just need a geocaching app to get you there. I am talking your cell phone. We tried the big geocaching app, but it kept nagging us to upgrade to the premium everytime we tried to click on something. That is when we took a few minutes and tried a new app, c:geo. This was a much better app. We area all Android users, so if you are looking for a really good geocaching app, check out c:geo. If you don’t have a smart phone, you can also go with a handheld GPS unit.

Mounds had three caches documented throughout the park. We spent the better part of three hours walking all over that park. The kids were into this! Even Elles was getting excited and climbing hills to get a shortcut to try to find the cache first. We found all three caches and signed the log book with our Bolt Bunch logo and asked people to check us out on YoutTube. Jakey even left a new package of dental floss in one of the caches. Not sure why, but I guess he is a giving person. Overall, everyone gave it a five star rating, except for Jakey, he gave it a 3.5 start review because he was mugged on the trail for his jacket (Meathead did it, it is a safe park) and he did fall down a hill once trying to find a cache first. I guess he is a tough reviewer! We all had a lot of fun. The kids were wanting to find more, but it was going on 4:30P.M. and we decided to walk back to the car and get cleaned up so we could go feed the bunch.

Want to learn more about geocaching? You can check out this book on Amazon or visit your local library. You can also find some more information here. This is a great family fun opportunity. I bet there are even some caches near you right now if you just look.

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